About
From Wikipedia[1]:
Anthropomorphism or personification is any attribution of human characteristics (or characteristics assumed to belong only to humans) to other animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits, deities, events, feelings and websites.
Origin
Beginnings of the humanity, anthropomorphism has allways been the part of the cultures, thoughts and religions. According to Wikipedia, the earliest evidence is about 40,000 years ago, examples of zoomorphic (animal-shaped) works of art occur.
Internet Subculture
In brief, Furries are animal characters who are highly anthropomorphic, especially in terms of intelligence, behaviour, emotions, communication, and culture. Additionally, people who are fans of such characters are also referred to as Furries.
Yotsuba is known as 4Chan’s “404 error” mascot. She appears in banned users messages, in ads, in logos, and in the HTTP 404 messages (leading to the nickname of 404 Girl). But also representer of all. She is actually woven into the the history of 4chan, as the software that 4chan runs on was lovingly code-named “Yotsuba.”
One other phenomena is the personification of non-human objects. A popular fad among corporations lately has been to create selling points for products by using anime characters or even creating moe mascot characters based off of different products.
Akita Neru is, unbelievably, a Japanese personification/moe anthromorph of a troll. She is NOT an official character of Vocaloid like Hatsune Miku.
When a website is personified, it is given a human form, a personality, or both. The personality and appearance given to the website is often derivative of the stereotype for people who use the site itself.
4chumblr
4chumblr refers to the fictionalized relationship between personified versions of 4chan and the micro-blogging site Tumblr. The anthropomorphized relationship stemmed from a trolling war between the sites known as Operation Overlord.
OS-tan is a popular series of Moe anthropomorphized characters drawn by Japanese amateur artists, with their personality traits based on various computer operating systems. The OS-tan mascots are typically depicted as women, with the OS-tan representative of Microsoft Windows operating systems usually depicted as sisters of varying ages.
[1]Wikipedia – Anthropomorphism